Free ClarenceBN by Sarah M. Anderson

spent the rest of the afternoon wrapped around each other in bed. After a few weeks, she let him go down on her, which was a new experience—and a mind-blowing one.
    Quickly, being with each other once a week became not enough. So they started having dinner every Wednesday night, as well. After the first dinner, Clarence insisted she bring Mikey the next time, so she did.  
    Clarence had a small present—a toy Thomas train and a DVD of Thomas stories to go with it and that was all it took for Mikey to decide that Clarence was just the coolest dude he’d ever known.  
    Then, one Friday night, Clarence came to dinner at the Tall Trees house. Tammy’s mom was positively giddy to have “Tammy’s friend” over and went so far as to bake a cake—which never happened outside of a birthday. Mikey told everyone—loudly—about all the cool stuff Clarence had given him or had at his house. The whole thing was all kinds of mortifying for Tammy, but at least Tara kept her mouth shut.
    And, after Tammy had put Mikey to bed, she went home with Clarence and spent the night in his bed. And most of the morning there, too.
    It was something she could get used to. Hell, it was something she was getting used to. Clarence didn’t make any grand promises, nor did he ask them of her. The most they discussed the future was the next time they’d see each other. The next night they had dinner together, the next weekend afternoon they could spend together—even just the next morning at the Child Care Center, sitting on the couch, drinking coffee and occasionally kissing when Mikey wasn’t paying attention.  
    There was no future, beyond tomorrow or this weekend or next week. There was just the now. And the now was pretty damn good.  
    In fact, the now was so good that Tammy had begun to allow herself to think beyond the next seven days because she’d been right about something—Clarence was a man she could love. He was constant and steady and responsible and she’d come to a place in her life where those things counted for a lot. But it wasn’t just that, not when he laid her out on his bed and always, always made sure she came first.  
    She’d always remembered Ezra as being this special lover, how he’d awakened her to the joys of sex and how it hadn’t been quite worth the surprise pregnancy and subsequent dumping but it was all she’d known and that made it special.
    Now she knew better.
    Ezra had been a selfish boy. Clarence? He put her first. He treated her son well. He made her want something more. He was a good man, possibly the best she’d ever known. And she was falling for him more and more each day.
    “Maybe,” she said one Saturday afternoon as she lay naked in his arms, both of them still breathing hard from the sex that got better every single time, “maybe we should start to think about . . . the not now.”
    Clarence propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at her. Hope burned bright in his eyes. “Yeah?”
    “Maybe,” she replied, feeling nervous. “Just a thought.”
    He looked like he wanted to smile but was trying really hard to not. “You mean like—and I’m just thinking out loud here—Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas? That’s only two months of not now. I could take Mikey trick or treating and we could spend Christmas together.”
    “Yeah, okay.” Two months ahead instead of two weeks ahead—that counted toward thinking about the future, right? “We can have Thanksgiving at my place, Christmas at yours?”
    Then he did grin down at her. She did that—she made him happy like that. It still felt like a foreign idea, that she could be enough for someone as good as Clarence.
    He lowered himself back onto her. “I know what I’m hoping to unwrap on Christmas morning,” he murmured as he kissed her breasts, his hands moving over her body again.
    She laughed, gripping his hair as his mouth moved lower and lower until his tongue was covering her clit and the tension began to